A Small-but-Growing Sorority is Giving Birth to Children for Gay Men

By FRANK BRUNI

Published: June 25, 1998

BROKEN ARROW, Okla., June 20—
Diane Thornton said that often, when she looked at her 5-year-old and 3-year-old sons, she felt there was a debt unpaid in her life, a kindness unanswered.

Ms. Thornton and her former romantic partner, who are lesbians, each conceived one of the boys with sperm from the same gay friend, and she told him that if he ever wanted to have and rear a child himself, ''you just say 'boo.' ''

He never did. So Ms. Thornton, 36, a social worker who lives in this suburb of Tulsa, went in search of a surrogacy agency with gay men among its prospective parents. Two months ago, for $15,000 plus expenses, she gave birth to a boy, who lives with his father and his father's partner in Los Angeles.

''This child was conceived in their hearts long before it was conceived in my womb,'' she said. ''I gave him 35 weeks,'' she added, referring to her pregnancy, ''but I didn't invest my hopes in him. His parents were doing that.''

As uncommon as Ms. Thornton's actions may be, they are by no means singular. In a society that is still grappling with its attitudes toward gay people having equal rights or marrying, let alone rearing children, a small-but-growing group of women -- most, it seems, heterosexual -- are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to help gay men have children genetically related to them.

The exact number is unknown, but a few experts on surrogate parents said at least scores of women had acted, or agreed to act, as surrogates for gay men. Their existence reflects the explosion in the use of surrogate parents for infertile couples and the emboldening of gay men and lesbians, many of whom no longer see their sexual orientation as a barrier to being parents.

The surrogates who help them are venturing onto largely uncharted terrain and issuing a bold challenge to traditional models of family life.

It is a challenge that deeply unsettles many Americans. Some legal and medical experts say surrogacy arrangements exploit vulnerable women and treat babies as commodities. And many conservative and religious groups say children reared by gay and lesbian parents get a distorted picture of right and wrong.

''You're exposing kids to an unhealthy environment,'' said Steve Schwalm, a senior policy analyst for the Family Research Council, an advocacy group in Washington.

But that sentiment is part of what motivates the surrogates who work with gay men, even though heterosexual couples are willing to pay surrogates as much.

''I knew they had the ultimate restrictions placed on them in trying to become parents, and I wanted to say it was ridiculous,'' Michele Cohen, 31, said in her two-room apartment in Santa Rosa, Calif., about 50 miles north of San Francisco.

Ms. Cohen, who is training to become a childbirth counselor, is three-months pregnant through artificial insemination by one of two gay men who live together in the Northeast. Two years ago, she delivered a baby boy for a gay man in California who did not have a partner.

Ms. Cohen, who is heterosexual, has a 4-year-old son, whom she is rearing alone. She said the financial burden was eased by her surrogacy fees, which are similar to Ms. Thornton's.

She said she reveled in being open-minded and had known gay people well. While that description fit most of the six surrogates interviewed for this article, one, Jennifer Waterman, 27, a nurse in Red Oak, Iowa, had never met an openly gay person when she decided, a year ago, to become a surrogate parent for one.

Her inspiration was twofold, she said. A cousin's painful experience with infertility had persuaded her to do something to help people frustrated in their desire to have children, and a community college project that involved reading ''And the Band Played On,'' a book about the AIDS epidemic, had filled her with compassion and admiration for gay men.

''It just clicked,'' Ms. Waterman, a married woman with two children of her own, said in a telephone interview.

She roamed the Internet, found a surrogacy agency that worked with gay men and is now trying, through artificial insemination, to get pregnant for a gay couple in Los Angeles.

She has the blessing of her husband, Robert, 27, who served for several years in the Navy and is studying to become a high school teacher. ''I know how I am with my kids,'' he said, ''and I'd hate to be in the shoes of someone who couldn't have kids.''

Ms. Waterman, Ms. Thornton and Ms. Cohen are working with Growing Generations, an agency in Beverly Hills, Calif., that sprang up two years ago and has matched more than 15 gay couples with surrogates.

Other signs also indicate that surrogacy for gay men -- arranged in rare cases for at least a decade -- is taking firmer root. In May, Andrew W. Vorzimer, a Beverly Hills lawyer, persuaded a California judge to list two gay men on the birth certificate of a girl conceived through the artificial insemination of a surrogate. It is believed to be a precedent.

Usually, Mr. Vorzimer said, the names of the biological father and mother go on the birth certificate; the mother then relinquishes her legal rights while the father's partner, in the manner of a stepparent, applies for a second-parent adoption.

Although several states, including New York and New Jersey, do not permit surrogacy agencies to operate within their borders, dozens of agencies operate elsewhere, especially in California.